In the appendix to Dead of Night, I present a selected mediography to the game, a sample of just some of the horror movies that I watched and books that I read when writing the second edition of the game. The movies presented in the mediography are those that I felt were most representative of the feel of the game, a whistle-stop tour of the influences and touchstones that give a reasonably good impression of how I envision a typical game.
In actual fact, this list was just the tip of the iceberg, for I must have watched scores of horror movies during the two or three years that Dead of Night was gestating. Most of these came from Scott Dorward’s big bag of DVDs, which he turned up with one Conception, and I must confess that there were some movies within the bag that even I could not face.
As I promised a complete mediography of influences and references in the back of Dead of Night, here it is in its entirety:
Films
28 Days Later
28 Weeks Later
30 Days of Night
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Alien
An American Werewolf in London
Audition
Bad Taste
Beowulf
Blair Witch Project
Botched
Braindead
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Cannibal Holocaust
Cemetery Man
Cloverfield
Cronos
Dawn of the Dead
Dead Snow
District 9
Dog Soldiers
Evil Dead
Friday 13th
Frostbitten
Ginger Snaps
Halloween
Hellraiser
Hostel
I Know What you did last summer
Invasion of the Bodysnatchers
Jacob’s Ladder
Ju-On: The Grudge
Let the Right One In
Martin
Near Dark
Night of the Living Dead
Nosferatu
One Missed Call
Predator
Re-animator
Resident Evil
Ringu
Rosemary’s Baby
Saw
Scream
Session 9
Severance
Testuo: The Iron Man
The Brood
The Cottage
The Curse
The Faculty
The Fly
The Grudge
The Haunting
The Host
The House on Haunted Hill
The Innocents
The Mist
The Mummy
The Omen
The Omen
The Shining
The Silence of the Lambs
The Thing
Thirteen Ghosts
Games
Bioshock
Half Life 2
Left 4 Dead
Silent Hill
System Shock
Resident Evil
TV
Fringe
Quatermass II
Supernatural
The X-Files
Books
Although the source material for Dead of Night primarily stems from the cinema and straight-to-DVD movie, there are a handful of books that encapsulate a good Dead of Night game too.
At the Mountains of Madness
Beowulf
Day of the Triffids
Dracula
Frankenstein
I Am Legend
The Call of Cthulhu
The Colour out of Space
The Dunwich Horror
The Island of Dr Moreau
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
The following reference guides were invaluable in researching the second edition, in particular the Genre and Creating your Monster chapters:
The Rough Guide to Horror Movies, Alan Jones, 2005
How to Survive a Horror Movie, Seth Grahame-Smith, 2007
Steampower Publishing 
I’ve seen a couple of monster movies recently that really feel like Dead of Night scenarios to me.
1) Frankenfish
As might suspect from the title, this is unashamedly a B-movie, but it’s not as schlocky as it sounds. It revolves around a medical examiner and a biologist rooting around the Louisiana Bayou to find out what has been killing and eating some of the residents. Most of the film takes place on a series of houseboats which are under siege from the monstrous fish of the title.
What makes the film good gaming inspiration is that it revolves around a group of characters in an isolated environment, having to face down a largely unseen threat, and has the characters acting largely sensibly, but still endangered by unforeseen hazards, infighting and just plain bad luck. Add in the fact that while it manages to balance tension, horror and black humour, and you have a perfect Dead of Night one-shot!
2) Rogue
Rogue is an Australian film about a group of tourists on a riverboat who run foul of a large and ill-tempered crocodile. It has some similarities with Frankenfish, that that it’s a largish group of characters who are stranded and dealing with an aquatic foe. It’s a slightly more serious affair, but still has the character dynamics of a good horror RPG one-shot.
There is another film along very similar lines to Rogue, called Black Water, which is much lower budget and really deals with isolation (most of it takes place in a single tree). It’s probably the better film, and is certainly grimmer and more tense, but feels less like a game session.
Is Black Water the one in a similar vein to Open Water, where the characters get stuck up a tree in crocodile-infested swamp? I think that’s based on a true story, and you’re right, it might struggle to be a good game.
That’s the one. It’s a terrific film, and it hides its lack of budget well by keeping to a few locations and using visual effects sparingly. The making-of documentary on the DVD is fascinating, in that it shows just what you can accomplish in a film with creative editing.
I imagine a game session which went along the lines of the film would be a bit dull, though, as most of it relies on menace rather than actual events. Rogue is more action-packed, if a lot less believable (especially the ending), but feels almost exactly like a game session.